The following new concepts are available for metadata handling:
Improved metadata handling affects the metadata properties on the Submit point and Checkpoint tools, described inSubmit_point and Checkpoint.
Also the job card, which is used to display and enter metadata, is affected. Those changes are described in a subsequent chapter.
Default values for bidirectional communication:
Bidirectional communication (that is, Client – Server – Client communication during file submission) requires that default values can be used for returning personalized information to the SwitchClient or the PitStop Connect.
For example: Default value(s) could be a list of order ID's coming from an external database and visualized in a dropdown list. In this case the customers can choose one of their jobs for which they have submitted the file. This example requires that Switch receives the user ID from the customer, uses this ID to get information from the database and returns that information (the order ID list) to SwitchClient or the Connector.
To accomplish this, a new group "Connection group" of variables has been added at the server side. The variables are:
[Connection.Role]
[Connection.Email]
[Connection.UserName]
[Connection.FullUserName]
[Connection.Group]
[Connection.IP]
You need not write any script to use the Connection variables. These variables are regular variables with two constraints:
Consider the following scenario as a simple example:
Let us suppose that there is a SwitchClient launched on a computer in a network with the IP 192.168.0.15. And there is also PowerSwitch launched on another computer in the network with another IP.
In PowerSwitch you can create a flow with a Submit point and in the metadata property (for example, in Default value field) of this Submit point you can use the [Connection.IP] variable. At some moment, SwitchClient connects to PowerSwitch and requests the value of metadata property of the Submit point (this is necessary to display/ enter metadata during job submission from SwitchClient). At this point PowerSwitch evaluates the dynamic parts of metadata (like Default value fields, values for dropdown lists etc) and replaces variables with its actual values and the actual value for [Connection.IP] variable will be the string '192.168.0.15'. If there is another SwitchClient, for example with the IP 192.168.0.171, then when this Client requests the same Submit point metadata, the [Connection.IP] variable will be evaluated into '192.168.0.171' and so on.
Easily update metadata from Submit point:
Update metadata from a Submit point in a Checkpoint. Submit and Check metadata is written into separate datasets and Switch 09 is not able to update external metadata. Also Switch will not be able to edit/ update such datasets. However, Switch makes it easier to re-use metadata fields from a Submit point in a Checkpoint. The value entered on file submission automatically becomes the default value for the Checkpoint metadata field.